#notesfromtheuniverse

Always Remember that the Best Remedy for Dealing With a Troubled Past is By Living in the Present. 🦋🦋🦋

Chapter 1. What is a character?

I’ve listed the notes taken on character building from most important to least important.

A character is their:

Actions & motive: everyone acts a certain way but why do they act the way they do?  

Past: “People are what they have done, and what have been done to them.” (8). 

Reputation: what do other people think of you. Or more to the book, people gossip and from that, they make a snap judgment. What reputation does your character have with the others in your story?  

Stereotype (w/in their job, sex, age, family role, race, ethnicity...): here, the author encourages us to use stereotypes to our advantage. we have to “count on” our readers to make these stereotypical judgments. “Characters who fit within a stereotype are familiar; we think we know them, and we aren’t all that interested in knowing them better. [...] Characters who violate a stereotype are interesting...” (11). 

Habits/patterns: what they do on the regular basis and if they try to change it, why? 

Talents/abilities: are they extremely gifted? In what away? Are they not?

Tastes & preferences: do they prefer to look or act a certain way?

Body: what do they look like?

Chapter 2. What makes a good fictional character? 

There three questions readers ALWAYS ask within the first paragraph: So what? Why should they care? Oh yeah? This is the clue/explanation that should persuade readers to trust you. Huh? Make it clear. Make it believable. 

YOU ARE THE FIRST AUDIENCE! - if you don’t care about what you’re writing, your audience also will not care. 

Questions to always ask:  WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? (in my opinion, the best question) Interrogate the situation and your character. Brainstorm a list of possible ways that events can go wrong, but still, drive the story and your character to an outcome/solution.

WHY?  Why is this happening? Why did the character act this way toward this event/person?  * Don’t ever settle for your first answer. The first answer is always obvious and too static. Add a twist (the author talks more about this in chapter 3, page 50):

Feeling gratitude in advance, before you even receive, as if you already had, whether for direction or abundance or anything else, opens the floodgates.

Gushing and Filling 🌊 The Universe

There hasn't been one single day of your life, when the world hasn't been made a better place by your presence in it. 

Kudos 🦋 The Universe

There are no accidents.

If it's appeared on your life’s radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. 

And believe me, that was one heck of a dream. 

Tallyho 💗 The Universe